Haslett High School, 5450 Marsh Road. The school was evacuated for a bomb threat Friday afternoon.

MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP, MI -- A false bomb threat kept Haslett High School students out of class for about three hours Friday morning.

But it happened on a day when some students already weren't in attendance.

Friday was Haslett High School's "Senior Skip Day", a widespread event commonly orchestrated by high school seniors wishing to be truant on a coordinated date of the school year.

Meridian Township police Lt. Greg Frenger said that could have played a part in the bomb threat.

"The school made us aware of ('Senior Skip Day') from the start," he said. "But given the atmosphere of things and recent events and so forth, the school made the determination early on that they were going to take it seriously."

When bomb threats are made, the subject of the threat usually has a hand in deciding how it is handled, Frenger said.

"Typically, they'll consult with us about what our thoughts are," he said. "In this case, we all discussed it and there was not much of a difficult decision to go ahead and treat it as if there was a potential bomb."

The threat was phoned in to Ingham County dispatchers at 9:12 a.m., Frenger said. Students and staff were immediately evacuated from Haslett High School. They returned to the building about noon, Frenger said, after police and firefighters swept the building and found no threat.

Calls placed to Haslett High School Principal Bart Wegenke were not returned.